Quote of the week [LWN.net]

Quote of the week

Posted Dec 16, 2004 16:38 UTC (Thu) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266)
In reply to: Quote of the week by gregkh
Parent article: Quote of the week

The kernel is only tied directly to the drivers because it's made that way. A stable binary API should be achievable and I think many users would say it's desirable. Yes there are challenges involved, and yes there is work involved. But why is it that the kernel-user interface gets special treatment? Don't people run open-source applications? They could just recompile them to access the kernel's updated binary API. I think it's really the same argument. Users want binary modules, just like they want binary programs. It may not be the best thing, but sometimes it's the only thing that works. Have a pdf file you can't read? Sometimes Adobe acrobat reader is the only program that deciphers it. Have some piece of hardware that you need to do a job? Sometimes there are only binary drivers for it.

Anyway, I can see from your webpage that you disagree with my view, and since it's not my code I can't tell you how you should do things. Personally I think a binary API would help. But then, considering that we don't even have a "stable" and "development" kernel anymore, I guess there's really no place to decide where it's ok to break the API.

(Log in to post comments)

Quote of the week

Posted Dec 17, 2004 2:33 UTC (Fri) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]

Now stability suffers greatly because you have scads of badly written drivers (probably with lots of them as proprietary binary blobs in your hypothetical situation) that run in kernel space but are illogically considered to be separate entities due to the "stable" kernel ABI.

Beyond that, now you can't even boot your PC without third-party motherboard binary drivers; it's so easy to develop and distribute proprietary drivers, why should hardware vendors bother with all this GPL nonsense? Sure, the core kernel is still free but it hardly matters anymore since any functional distribution requires a dozen or more third-party drivers to work correctly on a mainstream PC.

No thanks.

Quote of the week

Posted Dec 20, 2004 17:35 UTC (Mon) by mwilck (guest, #1966) [Link]

This is a pretty cheap way to bounce off criticism. You know it ain't that easy.

Quote of the week

Posted Dec 20, 2004 21:04 UTC (Mon) by mbp (guest, #2737) [Link]

I didn't say it would be easy.

It is, however, ultimately the only response to someone insists on something the projects' developers don't think is a good idea. It's easy to wish for ponies; the question is what are you going to do about it?

binary drivers

Posted Dec 17, 2004 10:06 UTC (Fri) by xav (subscriber, #18536) [Link]

The kernel is only tied directly to the drivers because it's made that way.

You didn't read Greg's link, did you ? The day Linux has a stable ABI for its drivers, it's dead. That would mean a proliferation of binary-only drivers for Intel architecture only, closed source without any update nor bugfix. And no possibility of having interfaces evolving. In that case, you'd better run Windows with up-to-date mainstream hardware.

binary drivers

Posted Dec 17, 2004 13:15 UTC (Fri) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]

Of course I read the link. And as others have also pointed out around
here, even if there isn't a stable ABI, we could at least have a stable
API, which would allow me to run a new driver on my 2.6.0 kernel if I so
desired. But we can't do that, because the driver API can change with
every minor 2.6 release. At least with 2.4, once the VM problems were
sorted out, there was some stability.

As to whether or not binary drivers are bad, all I can say is that if I
couldn't get a binary nvidia driver, I probably wouldn't run Linux on my
workstation. Believe me when I say that there is no good opensource
video driver for my video card, and my needs for a high-performance video
card outweigh my needs to run open-source software. For most people, the
computer is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. I dislike
binary drivers, and how I'm reliant on Nvidia to update it, and I worry
about what I'll do in a few years if my card stops being supported. But
in the meantime, my computer works wonderfully and I can use it for what
I intended. If I had to do as another user did, that is, buy an older
video card that has half the features, half of the intended use of my
computer would disappear. I'd LOVE to use an open-source driver, but
there just isn't one that meets my needs, not for my nVidia card, not for
any other equivalent card.

binary drivers

Posted Jan 3, 2005 17:13 UTC (Mon) by atrius (guest, #26979) [Link]

It's simple. As much as I love Linux, there is no way I would have started using it on a daily basis if I had to put up with the bloody nv driver for video. If it weren't for that evil binary driver, Linux desktop usage, aside from the hard core Free software people, would have stayed zero and would likely have remained that way for the forseeable future.